by Fields, MJ
“Promise?”
“Promise. This isn’t forever, Uno. I’ll be back, dominating you in foosball and Mario Kart before you know it.”
One
Bryce
Then
Bryce - 22, Elliot - 19
I don’t even know why I thought coming home was a good idea.
I trekked through the vineyard, wandering aimlessly, and watched the sun flirt with the horizon, painting the sky with a display of vibrant purples and oranges. If I’d been in a better mood, I could’ve appreciated the beauty.
I had four weeks left until graduation and about four years’ worth of shit to get done before then. But when my mom called and begged me to fly home for the weekend to attend the winery’s anniversary party, I caved. “It’s important for you to start learning the ropes around here. You’ll be taking over before you know it.”
It wasn’t the assumption that I was taking over that pissed me off. I was used to that. It was the fact that she and my dad just assumed my life could be put on hold, that it wasn’t asking much for me to drop everything and come running just because they asked.
If I was being honest, what pissed me off even more was that, as much as my parents said they loved and supported me, I knew that was only half true. If they really supported me, talking to them about what I wanted for my future wouldn’t feel like torture. They’d never expressed interest in seeing my designs. It was like they thought if they just pretended my love of architecture didn’t exist, it would eventually go away. They treated it as a fad, like I’d lose interest in it the same way I had lost interest in my Tamagotchi and my pet rock.
Architecture was my passion. Winemaking was my obligation.
My parents would never understand. The fact that I was about to graduate with a double major in architecture and business—an accomplishment I was immensely proud of and that most would find admirable—was another point of contention between us. As a compromise, I’d taken classes in viticulture during the summers, while also working my ass off to secure an internship at the top architectural firm in Seattle.
And it paid off; my boss, Mr. Martin, offered me a full-time job after I graduated. The salary was outrageous, the benefits were unbeatable, and the job was everything I’d ever wanted. It was basically a dream come true.
But accepting the job would mean destroying my already strained relationship with my parents.
Turning it down would be like throwing away my one chance to be truly happy.
Taking one last look at the sun before it disappeared for the night, I lifted my half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc and drank straight from it. I hadn’t even realized I was walking toward it until I looked over and saw the ‘B + E’ tree in the distance. As in Bryce + Elliot. This tree was our designated meeting place as kids.
Elliot Kincaid.
After I moved away, we texted some, but eventually the days between responses dragged out until we just fell out of touch completely. It didn’t help that I never came home.
I paused, immediately overcome with the desire to call her. To see her. It had been years since we’d seen each other, but I had a feeling if anyone could break me out of this shitty mood, it was El.
The closer I got to the tree, the more apparent it became that calling her wouldn’t be necessary.
She was there. Sitting against the trunk.
I practically sprinted toward her, only slowing down when I got close enough to take in her entire frame. Long blonde hair draped over her shoulders. Toned, tanned legs for days. Same slender build she’d always had. Except…this Elliot was all grown up.
“By now you should know I’ll always beat you here, Bryce,” she said, looking up from her phone with a smile tugging at her lips.
One sentence. That’s all it took for Elliot to brighten my mood.
My lips split into a smile that matched hers. “Can it really be considered a win if the other person doesn’t know you’re racing? Plus, we both know you always cheated your way to victory.”
“You wish. But I guess I can understand your need to justify losing all the time.” She sat a little straighter and tugged down the hem of her blue and white dress, eyeing me slowly. After dragging her eyes over the length of my body, she settled back on my face. “I’ve never seen you in a tux before. You look…different,” she finally offered.
I arched a brow and ran a hand along my jaw, fighting a smile. “Different?”
Her eyes swept over me again before meeting my gaze. “I mean…good different. But yeah, different.”
I couldn’t be sure if it was the dim evening light playing tricks on my eyes or if she really did have a light blush staining her cheeks.
“You’re awfully dressed up to be wandering around the woods by yourself though.”
I shrugged and loosened the tie around my neck. “The party sucked. Your grandparents were the only people there that I knew. I kinda thought you’d be there.”
“I was planning to go, but…” She trailed off and started picking at an invisible thread on her dress.
I zeroed in on her hands and felt my smile falter. Messing with her clothes was El’s tell that something was bothering her; it had been that way since we were kids. I was about to ask what was wrong when she jerked her hand back and looked up, her smile back in place. Only this time it looked less genuine, more forced.
“But something came up. So, uh, I see we had the same idea,” she said, holding up her own bottle of wine.
I knew why I was wandering around in the woods with a bottle of wine, but why was Elliot apparently drowning her own demons with booze?
I tossed my jacket onto the ground, rolled up my sleeves, and settled into a spot next to her against the trunk of the tree. “I guess great minds think alike.”
For a few minutes, we just sat there, neither of us making an effort to engage in conversation. It wasn’t awkward or weird. Despite the fact that El was definitely no longer a kid, she still felt like the same girl I’d had to coax out of her shell with candy and card games.
I downed the last of my wine and set the bottle aside.
“You know, I still have the scar from the first time you ejected me from the go-kart,” I said, lifting my arm to show her the thick white line. It wasn’t big, just a couple inches along the outside of my forearm, but I used to make up crazy stories about how I’d gotten it.
She just laughed and rolled her eyes. “And I’m sure you’ve got some elaborate fake story about it that you use to give yourself street cred or to pick up chicks.”
“Nah. I mostly just tell people this wild lunatic I used to run around with was trying to take me out so she wouldn’t keep losing to me in foosball and Uno.”
She let out another laugh, a little louder this time, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing along with her. El’s laugh was the epitome of contagious. More often than not, her laughter would turn into us both cracking up like hyenas.
“Since we’re swapping confessions," she said. "I should probably tell you that I threw you under the bus to Pops and Nana in high school when they asked about a purple stain on my bedroom carpet. My friend and I had snuck some of their wine into my room and I never knew it spilled. I panicked and the first thing I could come up with was that you knocked over a glass of grape juice several years back. Genius, I know.”
I snorted a laugh and nodded toward the bottle next to her. “Should we come up with another brilliant explanation for why this bottle’s missing?”
“Not necessary. My friend just turned twenty-one, so this was left over from the party last weekend.”
“Ah, fair enough. Well, feel free to use me as a scapegoat for any other illicit situations you get into.”
Our conversation flowed easily, and for a while we reminisced about old times and caught each other up on what we’d both been up to over the years.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard or the last time I’d enjoyed a conversation so much. For the past four years, my
life had revolved exclusively around school, which meant I had zero time for friendships beyond ones of convenience. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to confide in another person.
Leave it to Uno to bring out the sentimentalist in me.
“So what are you going to do after graduation?” she asked after I’d waxed on about the job offer and my internship for probably longer than she cared to listen.
“I don’t know. If I stay in Seattle, my parents are likely to disown me.”
“But is it worth sacrificing your own happiness just to meet their stupid, selfish expectations? I just listened to you talk about architecture with the same smile and love on your face that you had when you talked about it as a teenager. Bryce, you can’t give up something that makes you that happy.”
“It’s not that simple, Elliot.”
“Seems pretty simple to me. You haven’t spent the last four years working your ass off only to come back and be caged into a life of apathy. You deserve more than that. Pops has always told me that ignoring our life’s calling is the biggest disservice a person can do to himself. He says ‘that kind of acceptance snuffs out passion and binds you to a life devoid of purpose.’ I don’t know what my purpose in life is, but I do know he’s not wrong. And I think we both know winemaking isn’t your purpose in life, Bryce.”
“I wish my parents gave a shit about things like passion and purpose. Actually, I guess they do. Just not my passion or purpose.” I grabbed the bottle between us, now close to empty, and brought it to my lips. “Okay, enough about my shitty drama. Time for a new subject. Tell me something about your life. Anything.”
It was strange how easily we slipped back into a comfortable dynamic, despite the fact that we’d basically become strangers. But at the same time, it wasn’t that strange at all.
El bit her lip and started twisting a blonde lock around a finger. Another one of her tells. Something was definitely weighing on her. “Helen wants to meet Sophia and me. Next week.” She exhaled a long, heavy breath and turned toward me. “And as of now you’re the only person I’ve told.”
“Helen, as in…?”
“As in the woman who brought us to Nana and Pops almost fifteen years ago and vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Until she left me a voicemail yesterday.”
“Holy shit, Elliot. That’s…”
“Insane? Random? Utterly terrifying?”
“Yeah. Wait, you haven’t told Sophia or your grandparents? A friend?”
“You know what the word ‘only’ means, right?”
“Why haven’t you told anyone else?”
“Honestly, I’m not even sure how to answer that. Talking about her just never feels right. With you though…I don’t know, it’s just always been…different. Easier.”
For a second, we each let her words linger without saying anything else.
Elliot had always struggled with talking about her mother, but occasionally I’d gotten her to open up. I still didn’t know much about her time before she came to live next door, but I knew it wasn’t pretty.
I leaned over to bump her shoulder with mine. “I’ve missed this. Missed you, Uno.”
She nudged my shoulder back. “I guess I’ve kinda missed you too. Or maybe I just missed beating you at everything.”
“Big words for a girl who still owes me about fifty pounds of Starbursts,” I said, a skeptical brow arched at her.
“What?! No way. Pretty sure your memory is failing you, Bryce.”
I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight, bathing us both in a bright glow. “El. What are you going to do?”
She sighed and pulled her knees up into her chest, grabbing my jacket to drape over her legs before taking another sip of her wine. “I don’t know. My instinct is to protect Sophia, to keep her out of the equation until I know Helen won’t just vanish again. I just…Bryce, how can I not meet her? I’ve lived with the questions and the unknowns for so long. She could give me answers.”
“But you don’t…you don’t know her, Elliot. You can’t trust her. How did she even get your number?”
She shrugged, like she hadn’t considered that. “Does it matter? She’s my mother, Bryce.”
“Who’s had fourteen years to contact you but chose not to, which also makes her a stranger. I’m sorry, El, but I think it would be a mistake to trust her. I understand why you want to meet her, and I know you deserve answers, but DNA doesn’t mean you owe her an ounce of trust. You don’t know what kind of person she’s become or what she’s capable of. Trust is earned, not granted freely.”
Her brows shot halfway up her forehead before she pinned me to the spot with narrowed eyes. “Do you, though? Understand? Because I don’t think you can possibly understand. I know you and your parents don’t see eye-to-eye, but at least you know your parents, Bryce. I don’t even know my father’s identity.”
Her gaze fell to the ground, but I couldn’t look away from her. From the pain etched into her features. I wanted to absorb it all and have my smiling Uno back.
“I’ll be forever grateful to Nana and Pops, don’t get me wrong, but I just know this is my best chance—hell, maybe my only chance—to find out why my mom never came back for us. To find out why she did a lot of the things she did. Plus, it’s not like I’m going to meet her in some creepy abandoned parking garage. We’ll be in a public place, and if I’m not feeling it I can bolt.”
When her blue eyes finally found their way back to mine, it felt like her pain had multiplied, and it killed me. As much as I wanted to protect her, I knew she was capable of making her own decisions. I didn’t have to like it, and I might not even agree with her decision, but she deserved closure.
“You’re right, El. I can’t begin to understand what it’s like for you to have these questions or to have the opportunity to finally get answers. It’s your decision, and I’ll respect whatever you decide. I want you to have the closure you deserve.” I sighed and gently pounded my fist against her thigh. “Just promise me something?”
“Okay…”
“Don’t go by yourself. I really think the best thing would be to tell George and Millie everything first. And Sophia deserves to know too. But if you’re not going to tell them, at least take a friend with you to meet her.”
She pressed her lips together and considered my request for a second. “Bryce…the last time I tried to have a conversation with my grandparents about her, they shut it down almost immediately.”
“This is different, El. You know it is. Look…” I sighed, giving her hand a squeeze. “Bottom line is that you’re not alone in this. Just…let your grandparents and Sophia help you make this decision.”
She hesitated long enough for doubt to creep into my gut and linger there.
But then she squeezed my hand back and nodded her head. “Okay.”
The complete vulnerability in El’s expression was enough to make me want to do something rash like offer to go with her myself. While I internally considered the logistics of that, she leaned over and grabbed something out of her bag, keeping the mystery item hidden as she turned back to me. “Close your eyes,” she instructed, all traces of vulnerability gone, and a teasing smirk in its place.
I obliged, but cracked one eye open when I heard a plastic bag crinkle.
“Elliot Kincaid, you’ve been holding out on me,” I exclaimed, tacking on an overly dramatic tsk.
She laughed and threw a handful of Starbursts at me. “And you peeked!”
I flashed her my most dazzling smile, but she just rolled her eyes and dropped the bag between us.
“Look, Bryce, a shooting star,” she spluttered a minute later, gesturing behind me with a tilt of her chin.
I whipped my head around, but only saw the inky night sky and a handful of stars through the clouds. The second something pelted my shoulder I realized my mistake.
She bit her lip and grinned mischievously, and I couldn’t help but notice how pretty she looked when she wore a genuine smile. For
giving me that smile, she could hit me with every single Starburst in the bag. I opened my mouth to tell her that, but snapped it shut just as quick. What the hell am I thinking? This is Elliot—my friend.
Too much wine. That had to be the reason I was hyper-aware of every move El made and wondering if her hair felt as silky as it looked.
Instead of saying any of the borderline inappropriate thoughts filling my head, I just picked up an orange Starburst and pulled my arm back. “Oh, it’s on, Uno. It’s so on,” I promised.
By the time we made our way to Kincaid Manor, our stomachs full of candy and wine, it was late enough that all the lights were out inside the house. We stood on the porch for what felt like minutes on end, neither of us willing to be the one to end the night.
Without warning, she pulled me into a crushing hug, both arms wrapped around my waist like I was her only lifeline.
“Thank you,” she said, her cheek pressed against my chest. “For tonight. For making me laugh. For everything, Bryce.”
I tightened my grip around her and rested my chin on top of her head. “You kidding? Thank you, El. Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in forever. Seeing you has been the only good part of this trip home.”
I felt her cheek pull up with a smile. “I’m glad. Bryce,” she said, pausing and tilting her neck back enough to meet my eyes but keeping her arms around me. I pulled a hand up to brush a chunk of her blonde bangs off her face. Totally something friends do. “I think you should stay in Seattle. You deserve to be happy.”
Looking down and into El’s eyes, brimming with sincerity and something else I couldn’t name, the urge to kiss her coursed through me with unrelenting urgency. She pressed up on her toes and I lowered my head until our lips were past the point of return.
But at the last second, I redirected my mouth to press a kiss against her cheek. I can’t kiss her. Not when I’m leaving tomorrow and probably not coming back.
Confusion was written plain as day on her face as she unwrapped her arms from my body and stepped back. She knew as well as I did that we were millimeters from crossing that invisible line friends don’t cross.
